


Your Grace Is Wasted in Your Face

by trinityofone



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Body Image, Class Issues, Internalized Homophobia, Johnny Lawrence Beard Appreciation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28981464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone/pseuds/trinityofone
Summary: Daniel is playing with Johnny's hair when he says, dreamily, “You know, I used to fantasize about you going bald.”
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 37
Kudos: 212





	Your Grace Is Wasted in Your Face

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a tribute to Johnny's beard, of which I am an enormous fan. I've noticed, though, that he only grows a beard when he's digging around near rock bottom, and I wanted to explore what that says about his conception of himself. As usual, the story grew and mutated a bit. Thanks to [Siria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria) for betaing what it became.
> 
> Title is from Mumford & Sons' "Little Lion Man," because if Johnny can be stuck in the '80s, I can hang out in 2009 for a bit.

Daniel takes him fishing. Johnny suspects, going in, that this is a sneaky attempt to preach some Miyagi-Do balance bullshit—Sam, in the interest of peaceful sensei relations, may have tipped him off—and as it turns out, Daniel does try to slip in some of that. 

But mostly they just fuck in their tent. And a little in the boat. (This activity being curtailed after Daniel, in a post-orgasmic haze, leans back and nearly impales his palm on a fishhook.)

It’s a three-day weekend. Johnny has spent significant stretches of his life un- or underemployed, but aside from Tommy’s final ride, he can’t remember the last time he actually took a vacation. For three days he and Daniel do nothing and everything: they fuck, they fish, they tromp around in the woods; they spar and they sit out under the stars. 

But to return to the fucking (Johnny, in his dreams, will be returning again and again to these three days of fucking; even if he tanks it all, even if he ruins it all tomorrow). Daniel is always so fastidiously clean. He wears his little suits and his high-end athleisurewear and he _folds his underwear_ (Johnny has seen him), and in a weird way sometimes Johnny finds himself missing the scrappy messy little punk he first met. Adult Daniel LaRusso sometimes seems like he doesn’t want to mess up his two-hundred (three-hundred? Four-hundred? Johnny’s last trim cost fifteen bucks) dollar haircut, like he’d rather _die_ than get dirt under his perfectly clipped nails. 

But here in the woods Daniel lets Johnny tussle him down onto the ground, gets mud on his back and leaves in his hair. He stinks. After several days of hiking and fishing and fighting and fucking, he really, genuinely, has a smell, and he doesn’t whine about it or run for his aftershave; he thrusts his cock between Johnny’s slicked thighs and sniffs along Johnny’s throat, comes with his mouth gasping into Johnny’s sunburned neck. He kisses Johnny and shares his rank campfire breath, and then they sit at the end of the dock, drinking coffee in enamel cups, until the sun dips down and they’re ready to go again.

Johnny came out here as a gift to Daniel, and it annoys him a little bit that he has loved it so much, that Daniel gave _him_ something. It annoys him that they have to leave. So he picks a fight about the proper way to load the car, and they bitch at each other and go to war over the radio dial until Daniel plays dirty with his dumb steering wheel controls and locks the channel on NPR. Johnny makes an, in retrospect, unfair and unfounded comment about Terry Gross’ parentage, then sulks all the way back to the city.

Johnny fully expects Daniel to get off the freeway at Johnny’s exit and drop him unceremoniously outside his own apartment building—possibly without stopping the car. Instead he drives to their dojo and proceeds Johnny wordlessly into the house. Johnny follows, wary. Daniel’s still in the hall, removing his boots once again with fastidious care; he places them neatly on the shoe rack. Johnny loosens his laces and kicks his way free just as Daniel, with a look, walks down the hallway to the bathroom. He doesn’t close the door.

Johnny’s an idiot, but sometimes he can take a hint.

“I thought you were mad at me,” he says, lifting his arms so Daniel can finish tugging his shirt off.

“I’m always mad at you.” He shoves at Johnny’s chest, and only Johnny’s highly trained reflexes prevent him from stumbling over the lip of the tub. “Mad at you, mad for you; what’s the difference?”

The water comes on with a hiss and Johnny feels something in his chest ease. “Yeah, well, right back at you, LaRusso.” 

He crowds Daniel back into the path of the warm spray. Daniel laughs, and grabs at Johnny’s shoulders with slippery hands, flipping their positions. The hot water feels good so Johnny lets him. Daniel’s fingers running along his scalp, rubbing shampoo into his hair—that feels good too, so Johnny lets Daniel do that as well, and also some other things. The water heater gives out before they do.

The fact that Daniel lets Johnny pick him up, and carry him naked and dripping into the bedroom, makes up for the NPR thing. Mostly.

Johnny drops Daniel down onto the mattress and then straightens up, regarding him. The look on Daniel’s face is smug, his eye contact deliberate as he bites his lip and lazily fists his cock. Johnny drops down again, bats his hand away. Johnny licks up the length of him, feeling weird and performative, like a stripper fellating her pole. His mouth is watering. Daniel makes a gut-punched sound as Johnny takes the head of his prick into his mouth. Johnny kneads at his thighs. There’s a scornful voice in his head that still sometimes protests when he does this, but there’s also Daniel moaning and squirming, his leg muscles quivering, and Johnny feels a buzz almost like victory when he swallows him down.

Afterwards, Daniel’s feeling particularly cuddly. Johnny’s surprised Daniel’s not sick of him, frankly; that after three, almost four full days, he wants to lie here and stare into Johnny’s eyes—all that girly shit. That morning, they woke in the woods, climbed to a vista as the sun was still rising, made out against several accommodating trees, completed one last obligatory attempt at fishing, and then got in a dumb stupid fight because Mr. Auto Czar Balance Man didn’t understand appropriate motor vehicle weight distribution. Maybe Daniel’s ultimate defeat of their mutual enemy, L.A. traffic, was what allowed them to be here, their legs tangled and their breath evening out at a synchronized pace.

Daniel keeps reaching over and playing with his hair, though, to the point where Johnny is starting to suspect that maybe he wants to make a wig out of it. Johnny’s about to tell him to quit it when Daniel says, dreamily, “You know, I used to fantasize about you going bald.”

“ _What_?” Johnny has to restrain himself from like, knocking wood or something. Though Daniel’s head would maybe do.

Daniel’s chuckling to himself, enjoying Johnny’s horror. “When I thought about you—in retrospect, I thought about you more often than maybe I should have—this was before that day at the dealership, when I saw you again.” Johnny nods, because he can at least acknowledge that _after_ that day, when they reentered each other’s lives, it was of course perfectly reasonable that they each think about the other all the time. “Sometimes,” Daniel says, a faraway look on his face, “I’d imagine you out there somewhere, having totally lost your looks. I’d tell myself that you were probably fat now, and ugly. And bald. Definitely bald.”

Johnny should be offended. He should be knocking more wood and/or heads. But Daniel’s looking at him like he’s so clearly none of these things, these random jinxes that he’s throwing around; he’s looking at Johnny like he’s their opposite. Johnny feels a prickle at the back of his neck. A sudden urge: he rolls over on top of Daniel, pinning him; the bed groans. “Yeah, well, joke would’ve been on you, LaRusso,” he says.

“Yeah?” Daniel squirms pleasantly. “You think I still would’ve wanted you?”

“Yeah.” It makes as much sense as Daniel wanting him now. “You can’t help yourself.”

Daniel does something sneaky and snakes out of Johnny’s grip, but only to wrap his hands around the back of Johnny’s neck, bring his face down. “It kills me to feed your ego,” he says, “but you are so fucking sexy like this.”

He takes Johnny’s face in his hands, and Johnny becomes conscious that he hasn’t shaved in almost four days. He’s surpassed stubble and proceeded to full-blown scruff, the beginnings of a proper beard. (Daniel’s jaw is, of course, barely shadowed. Johnny thinks it would take him eight full weeks to grow a mustache.)

“Jealous, Danielle?”

Daniel ignores the interjection. He’s got a hungry, calculating look on his face. “You had a beard that day, too. When I saw you again.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Johnny tugs his chin away. He’s not sure what Daniel’s play is here, but maybe after all the compliments, he just feels like being mean, reminding Johnny of what a mess he was back then.

“You haven’t had one since we started…” Daniel tips his head, acknowledging the brackets around [their thing], [whatever this was]. He grins. “I think I have beard burn on my thighs from when you went down on me before.”

Johnny pushes up, away from Daniel’s body, flushing. “Sorry, I’ll shave.”

“What?” Daniel’s hand catches on his arm. “Johnny, I’m saying I _like_ it.”

Johnny blinks down at him. “Is this another one of your fantasies?” He pulls away and it’s easy; Daniel wasn’t holding on very tight. “Imagining me bald? Seeing me look a wreck?”

Daniel’s wearing that dumbfounded look he gets when things don’t go exactly his way. “Wait, what just happened? That is _not_ what I was saying, Johnny, jeez.”

He’s swung his legs to the side, is starting to get up. Very deliberately, Johnny raises his hand and does a mocking, exaggerated version of Daniel’s favorite dismissive gesture: this conversation? Not even worth his time.

He turns and stomps back down the hall. In the bathroom, his filthy shorts are still crumpled on the floor, but he doesn’t feel like getting or pawing through the random assortment of workout clothes he has stashed here, so he just tugs them on anyway. He doesn’t have his own razor here either, but Daniel’s got some ridiculous and overly complicated electric thing, so he’ll just use that. Serves him right anyway. 

He’s still futzing around trying to figure out the nine hundred pointless buttons when there’s a pounding on the door. “Johnny!”

“Esta ocupado,” he shouts back, grateful to Yaya Rosa for the opportunity to be rude in more than one language.

“Johnny, come on.”

“Hold it like a big boy.” He finally gets the razor to turn on, but he hasn’t lathered up yet so he turns it off again and sets it on the side of the sink. Instead of having a can of Barbasol like a man, Daniel’s only got that fruity stuff that comes in little tubes and costs like thirty dollars. Johnny feels like a jackass spreading it over his raggedy beard. He looks like shit. Daniel is obviously sick in the head, or maybe the years of getting his ass kicked have taken their toll; only someone who’d taken _that_ many beatings could possibly want this.

He shaves quickly and it’s a little better (a little if not much)—at least now he can see the ghost of who he used to be. Those three or so perfect years: after he finally came into himself, before LaRusso laid him out on that mat. Or even that period, for a little while afterward, when he thought he might still be able to claw himself back there: to that level of confidence, that feeling of invincibility. Which is bullshit, he knows that now: how confident was he when Ali dumped him? Was he ever _anything_ like invincible wriggling under Kreese’s thumb? But the way he _felt_. Or maybe that’s just what it is to be young and stupid.

Well. He’s definitely no longer one of those things.

He leaves Daniel’s shaving things haphazardly in the bowl of the sink, gathers his clothes, and unlocks the door. He wants to be relieved that Daniel is no longer waiting outside, but the empty hallway feels like a knife to the gut. He leans against the front door to tug on his jeans, his sweat-rimed shirt. His boots are where he left them: on the floor, one toppled messily over the other, while above them Daniel’s sit lined up neatly, toes to the wall.

Johnny lets the door close behind him with a satisfying slam.

Of course he has no easy way to get home. Daniel drove him here. He figures he could probably hotwire one of the classic cars in the lot, but that would be just another thing—another fucking _car_ , even—that Johnny owes him. Besides he has that thing that Miguel put on his phone that seemingly summons Dayona Priuses. Johnny’s really not in the mood to listen to some out-of-work actor describe the plot of the screenplay he’s working on because he’s realized he needs to “make things happen for myself,” but it’s better than the bus. Maybe he can pretend to pass out in the backseat.

He’s standing outside the gate, watching “Brendon” somehow switch between being three and fourteen minutes away every few seconds, when he hears the crunch of gravel behind him. He whips around (reflexes!) but there’s no one there. Daniel isn’t there. 

It’s with a sickening lurch that Johnny realizes how much he _wanted_ him to be. He wanted Daniel to have come after him, to have once again made an offering of peace. To have left the door open at the end of a long hallway and waited for Johnny to walk inside. 

“Fuck,” Johnny says. He consigns Brendon and his hopeless circling to his pocket.

Out back, he expects to find Daniel cow-eyed and Zenlike, moving placidly through his Miyagi-dosey-do. Instead he’s sitting on the steps with his head in his hands. Johnny stops short; Daniel’s head snaps up. They stare at each other.

Finally, Johnny drags himself forward another foot. “Sorry.”

Daniel stands up. “No, _I’m_ sorry—” 

Where does he get off stealing Johnny’s apology too? “Hey, it’s my turn. I’m saying it right now.”

“It’s not a contest,” Daniel huffs.

“Yeah, I know,” Johnny says. “’Cause if it was a contest, I would win. You really wanna take this back to 1984 and go sorry for sorry?”

“I mean, that would probably be healthy. But no.”

Johnny realizes they’ve drifted closer to each other; he hadn’t noticed. “All right. So, mine.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I overreacted or whatever. God, I sound like a chick.”

Daniel doesn’t look any more comfortable than Johnny. “And I’m sorry I. . .made you feel self-conscious? It was the opposite of what I wanted.”

The apologies sit there, like gauntlets they’ve thrown down. Johnny and Daniel shift their feet.

“Now what?” Johnny asks after a minute. 

“I don’t know.” Daniel scratches at his neck. “When Amanda and I fought, she always found a graceful way to transition us to a new topic.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen _here_ ,” Johnny says, stating the incredibly obvious. 

“I could call her and ask.”

“Great plan.”

“She’d probably have some good advice.”

“She’s _much_ smarter than you, so yeah.”

Daniel chuckles weakly. He places his hands on his hips, then drops them, indecisive. 

_Next time I probably will ruin this_ , Johnny wants to tell him, just so he’s prepared. 

But before he can speak, Daniel blurts out, “I really did like the beard, you know.”

Johnny touches his smooth-shaven cheeks. “Yeah?”

Daniel’s face is slightly flushed. “Yeah. It made you look. . .rugged. Adult. In thirty-four years I hadn’t pictured _that_. That you’d come in and look. . .exactly the same, but _different_.”

“Old,” Johnny says.

“Well, yeah. Older. We grew up, Johnny.” His expression turns rueful. “Well, at least I _thought_ I had.”

“I thought about you too,” Johnny admits. It comes bubbling out like he’d been waiting to say it. “Every day for thirty-four years. I didn’t work in some creepy fetish for bald dudes, though.”

“And I never said anything about _every day_ ,” Daniel crows, then shrugs. “Just more than I should have been.”

“Well, my stupid face isn’t plastered on billboards all over town.”

“So you had to _know_ I’d kept my hair,” says Daniel, smugly.

Johnny smirks. “Coulda been a toupee.” 

Daniel curls his toes and knocks them against the wooden boards of the deck.

The sound is nearly drowned out by a flurry of beeps from Johnny’s pocket. 

“What’s that?” 

“Oh,” says Johnny, who’d completely forgotten he’d used the car-summoner. “It’s Brendon.”

“Who’s Brendon?”

Johnny tries to explain about the program on his phone, like Miguel had explained it to him, but the whole thing appears to go over Daniel’s head, because he just laughs and then frowns a lot. “You probably want to go back to your own place,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Johnny says. Or at least, he wants to have dinner with Miguel and Carmen and Yaya Rosa, but that’s not till tomorrow night. “I mean. . .you’re probably sick of me, so. . .”

“Vice versa,” says Daniel, and they laugh about how they’ve really exhausted each other’s tolerance for one another’s company.

Johnny starts moving toward the side of the house, his phone held in front of him like a tether. Daniel reaches for the door to head back inside. “Well, see you tomorrow for class,” he says.

“Yeah, smell ya later,” says Johnny for some fucking reason, before turning and scurrying toward the gate.

Brendon is waiting there in his ugly white Dayona. “John?” he asks brightly, when Johnny opens the door. He’s a young guy, maybe only a handful of years older than Miguel. With his torso turned to look at Johnny as Johnny grunts and slides into the car, it’s clear he’s got one of those L.A. gym bodies that look impressive but are actually next to useless in a fight. He’s also what Johnny would have, until recently, called _flaming_. Actually he’d still call him that. There’s such a thing as _discretion_ , after all.

Once Johnny’s settled, collapsed against the scratchy cloth seats, Brendon turns back around and taps his enormous phone where it’s mounted on the dash. He rattles off Johnny’s address and Johnny confirms it with another grunt. He closes his eyes, determined to try the “pretend pass-out” plan, but the car never lurches into motion. 

“Uh,” says Brendon. “There’s a guy running out of the house, waving his arms?”

Johnny pulls himself upright and sees Daniel “Master of Discretion” LaRusso jogging toward the car. Having clearly halted Johnny’s escape, he’s no longer flailing his limbs, but he pulls up beside the back window and makes one of those cheesy _roll it down_ gestures.

Johnny stabs at the button. Nothing happens.

“Sorry, child-locked,” says Brendon. “Here you go.”

The window glides down. “Sorry,” Daniel says, panting. His cheeks look pleasantly flushed. “Just. . . I thought of something.”

Johnny gives Daniel an incredulous _go on_ look.

“Here.” He shoves a little box at Johnny through the window. “It’s beard oil. In case you decide to grow it back, but want to make sure it’s, you know. Neat and stuff.”

Johnny stares at Daniel for a long moment. He swallows. “Why do you even have this?” he asks.

Daniel shrugs. “I think Anthony gave it to me for Father’s Day. I’ve never—”

“—Used it? No kidding. Your son knows you so well,” Johnny can’t help adding.

“ _Hey_ ,” says Daniel.

“Sorry,” Johnny mutters. He folds his hand around the little box. “And, you know, thanks.”

Daniel’s hands have returned to his pockets. He shrugs, casual. “Yeah, no problem.”

He’s backed up a step. Johnny feels an urge—but he can’t—he drops the box carefully onto the seat beside him. “Daniel,” he says, reaching out.

The angle is incredibly awkward, the window too small, but they’ve always moved well around each other, in sync with the other’s motions. Johnny snags Daniel’s shirt and tugs his head down; Daniel’s hand on his shoulder keeps him in balance as he leans out. Johnny can feel the hum of the car all around them as they kiss, and Brendon definitely stops texting to watch them in the rearview mirror, but he’s a stranger and an infant, and Johnny decides he doesn’t care.

“Well, bye,” Johnny says, when they break apart.

“Don’t you mean _smell ya later_?” asks Daniel, in a tone of deep mockery.

“Fuck you, LaRusso,” Johnny says. He can still hear Daniel laughing through the open window as Brendon drives away.

“Listen,” says Brendon, when they hit their first light. “I hope you don’t mind me saying. . .” He continues before Johnny can express that he absolutely does. “. . .but you and your boyfriend are like, so inspirational? I’m actually working on a screenplay right now? I mean, I’m an actor, but I’m not getting the type of parts I deserve? So I figured I should just write what I wanted, I mean, how hard can it be. And the movie I’m writing—I mean, maybe it could be a TV show, like a Netflix thing actually, it’s so epic. It takes place during the Gold Rush, you know, prospectors and stuff. And the hero, my character, he’s working on a claim, and he falls in love with another forty-niner, but they’re each other’s competition for this major haul, and also the past is all gross and homophobic and stuff, so they can’t make it work. And at first I was thinking it should end tragically, like a _Brokeback Mountain_ kind of thing? Like, it’s a classic for a _reason_.”

“Uh huh,” is all Johnny says, because he has lost the will to live.

“ _Right_? But then I thought, that movie was like fifteen years ago! I was what, ten when it came out? And things have changed a lot. So maybe it would be better if years later they found each other again. We could do some old age makeup on me and whoever we get to play my love interest—I was thinking maybe Robert Pattinson? So we’re old now, like you and your boyfriend, but we meet up again, and we have a second chance. But I still don’t know. Is that just too cheesy and stupid? I mean, I think it’s pretty romantic. So long as we don’t do _gross_ old age makeup. But what do you think? Do you think it sounds too crazy? Like, is somehow getting another shot like that just completely unrealistic?”

It took several seconds before Johnny realizes his driver is actually waiting for an answer. Then, to Johnny’s surprise, a few seconds more before he finds his voice.

“Nah, kid,” he says. “I guess I can believe it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've had L.A. Lyft drivers--and shudder, first dates--describe screenplays to me that sounded way worse than this tbh. I guess what I'm saying is, I support Brendon going after his dreams.


End file.
